Plugin ideas

Emoticon: Adds emoticons to posts and comments when user writes colon and parenthesis :) or other text representations

Sitemap: a plugin that will output a site map with an ordered list of pages and subpages for sites with lots of content pages.

Post review: setup a specific user(s) to receive notifications of a new post made by a user and then have those posts reviewed and eventually published. It could work like this: if the user that enters a post is of certain role, then the post is set as draft (and perhaps marked for review in a custom field). The plugin will make sure that the user does not see the publish status by modifying the post panel. Then users of other higher role will see posts to review in a pod in the dashboard.

30 Comments

Would like to have the TinyMCE pop up for links and photos to include the advanced tab set options like class names, titles, descriptions, rel, etc. They are included with the original download however the version that comes with mango has them disabled.

While thinking about tinyMCE, I would like to have an option to insert swf files. An enhancement to the editor would be to use SWF Object to play the videos. see http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/ for documentation.

This ties back to the JW FLV Media player http://www.jeroenwijering.com/?item=JW_FLV_Player that would allow you to upload your video files to play within your blog without having to use an outside service like youtube. I know my wife will not allow me to post our family videos on youtube as she is concerned about privacy issues.

A few plugins that are common that could be automated through the admin would be

1. Flickr plugin - Similar to current google analytics plugin2. Twitter - Similar to current google analytics plugin3. Lightbox (I have one started) Please see forums for alpha download

A few other ideas.1. ability to set a mango page as the mainpage. This would be great for designers wanting to use mango for extended uses. Not just a blog2. Ability to add [code] to your post or page without having to disable javascript :(

Something that I have started to develop was a download manager tracker. I have started a standalone download counter that tracks what files are being downloaded, how many times, the dates and by whom. I started this so I can tell when clients download files so I can either remove them from the server or know if someone is lying when they say they hadn't downloaded a file.

I also found this useful in my blog when I wanted to see how many times a photoshop brush pack or any other file had been downloaded.

This could be tied back to an even larger mango stats monitor. Like tracking views on pages or articles that would allow templates to include a "Most Popular Topics" category in their sidebar.

Another idea I had for a plugin is some sort of automated sitemap tool. I know there is a plugin already that will create an xml version for search engines. However I think a sitemap page using the generic.cfm page and outputing an ordered list of pages and subpages would be the best solution for sites with lots of content pages.

This may not be as much a plugin as much as it is a request for a new feature. Keywords and other popular metadata should be included in the admin under settings. That would be a great feature and keep people from having to carry over that code from template to template.

In addition to the plugin itself, you need a small update in PageManager.cfc, a file that I've included in the zip. I also included other updates, that are not needed for the plugin, but I thought it would be nice to have (part of version 1.2)

Something else I thought of that would be a neat addition is a download counter plugin. I built a custom solution for my site but it would be great if a plugin was available that would allow you to insert a download link in your post or page. The downloader would force a download of any file regardless of file type. In addtition, it could update a counter table that you could choose to display file downloads. I see this in wordpress blogs all the time where icons or other items have a line that reads "xxxx downloads so far" Great tool for hyping up downloadable products.

Thinking about CAPTCHA and how much it annoys me and others, I was wondering if there can be a plugin add to the "Remember My Informaion" plugin that would not display a CAPTCHA if the user was remembered as an OKAY poster. Or maybe it's not a new plugin but a mod of the existing one.

We've been using WordPress as a platform for a few small sites where I work and I've been trying to find some nice CF alternatives. I love the look of Mango, but I'm wondering if anyone knows if someone is working on a plugin equivalent for the WP Wassup plugin ( http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wassup/ ) - unfortunately it's the first thing my manager asked me when questioning Mango's features.

Steve, I doubt anyone has already taken that on. That said, developing Mango plugins is generally a piece of cake. I'd be happy to help you get started and then help you if you got stuck in your development. The beauty of open source is that the community can help itself! Ask your boss if you can develop that plugin and give it to the community. :)

Here are a few more plugin ideas that would be nice to have created for mangoblog.

1. Post and page counter. I believe wordpress already has this and I know it's not a huge task to create but it would be great if mangoblog would count each hit a post received and maybe display it in the list view of the admin.

2. Alert or site wide notification manager. Sometimes you need to broadcast a special bulletin across all your pages. Adding a special div to to the template is easy enough for most people but is sort of a headache if you do not have access to your sites code. Having something like that built into mango blogs admin would be a great utility when you really need it.

need option to change sending addresses in the forms the blog uses. many emails cannot be sent because they need to authenticate off of the sending address. Setting up authentication information on CF Admin does not resolve this because the Sending account is sometimes the "user" of the blog or blog subscription. The emails ALWAYS need to be sent out from an account that is on the server and that can be authenticated. The "users" address can be in brackets so that you can see it upon delivery. you can also include the "users" email address in the reply-to field so when the message is received, a reply sends it back to the "user" and not the servers sending address.

Matthew, while what you're saying is certainly not a bad thing, I wouldn't say it "ALWAYS" needs to be that way. My server has SMTP setup to allow anonymous relay, but only for requests originating on itself; so any email sent looks like it's coming from the from address used.

That said, I don't think adding a configuration point for the from address would be a bad thing.

Matthew,That default email address, and server username and password can be configured in the config.cfm file. All email will be sent using that address and server information. However, that address can also be changed for comment notification in specific, from the settings page. The only email that uses the commenter's address is the blog author notification. If you don't like that, you can replace the SubscriptionHandler plugin with your own.

I'd like to second Marks request.Its important to differentiate meta data for each page on a site or search engines see it as duplicate content and penalize it.

Thanks!

Mark Aplet on June 02, 2008This may not be as much a plugin as much as it is a request for a new feature. Keywords and other popular metadata should be included in the admin under settings. That would be a great feature and keep people from having to carry over that code from template to template.